How do you clean up your keggles and equpment after brewing?

[Stevorino]

I brewed at my new place for the first time yesterday. It was a blast, but I probably used 50 gallons of water - 40 for pre-cleaning and post-cleaning.

I'm most concerned with how people typically clean their keggles. I did a PBW soak in each - but it took a ton of time and water, including the subsequent StarSan rinse.

What do you all do?

 

[2nd Street Brewery]

For my keggles and immersion chiller, nothing more than water a scrubby and some elbow grease.

 

[ohiobrewtus]

A good spray down does it most of the time. About every other brew session I get out the brillo pads and have to scrub the hell out of the keggle.

 

[Wayne1]

There is no reason to soak a keggle in PBW. I keep a two gallon bucket nearby with 1 gallon of water with PBW added. A green Scotch scrubbie waits inside.

When the sparge is over and the wort is transferred to the kettle, I take the keggle used for HLT, rinse out very well with a hose and then do a light scrubing with PBW. Rinse again and then it is done.

The MLT gets the same treatment after the grains are added to the compost heap. Rinse, light scrub, and another rinse.

Kettle, same again. Rinse, slightly heavier scrub, rinse again. I spray the hose through all the valves, sight glasses and the into the thermometer fittings.

There is no need for any kind of soak. Most brew sessions should not produce that much soil.

The hot side gear does not need Star San. Everything will be boiled for at least 60 minutes. That doe a fairly decent job of sanitizing.

Now the heat exchanger and fermenters do need some care and maybe soaking time. Not the HLT, MLT, or brew kettle.

 

[betch]

Rinse and store. No issues after many brews. Only scrub keggle after pumpkin ale in the fall. Maybie not enough cleaning, but the brew still tastes great. Work smarter not harder!!

 

[GilaMinumBeer]

A 5 to 10 gallon, recirculative, hot PBW soak and brush down. I start in the HLT and x-fer to each subsequent vessel and finally through my chiller system. Then back it all up with an acid rinse. Yeah. Cleaning takes almost as long as brewing but, it all takes place simultaneously.

I have rock hard water and have spent too damn much money on my system to skimp on cleaning.

 

[MSUConrad]

I use Bar Keepers Friend and a green scrubbie. Works like a champ.

 

[TwoHeadsBrewing]

Most brew days I just spray everything out, and hit the boil kettle with a brush to get the caked wort off. The mash tun just needs a good spraying out, rarely and scrubbing. Once every 3-4 brew days, I will heat up about 5 gallons of extra water in the HLT and add some PBW. I move this around to various vessels after cleaning them out and give them a really good scrubbing. Then rinse with clean water, drip dry, and put away. Keeps everything nice and clean, and only takes about an extra 1/2 hr once every couple months.

 

[ChillyP]

I moved recently and left a couple of kegs with beer residue in them(about 1 year). They were really scummy. I mean bad. I put a gallon of hot water in my keg with PBW. I then boiled water and added it till I got to 5 gallons. I let this soaked for a couple of days. I then used my brush to get as much as I can. I still couldn't reach some of the parts. I then added rock salt (probably about 10 cups) and added a half bottle of cheap ($3) liter of vodka. I then closed it, pressurized it and shook the heck out of it. I then stuck them in the back of my truck and drove around for a week with them, letting them roll around. They came out spotless and even cleaner than I remember. I learned my lesson letting them get this bad.

 

[velotech]

First, I spray it all off to get loose materials out, then PBW and StarSan. I make a gal or two mixture that gets reused for all vessels.

 

[Pangea]

No need to sanitize brewing equipment, only the stuff post-boil. I make up a 5 gallon bucket of cold water from the hose with a few tablespoons of PBW. I use a sponge w/ scrubby on one side to clean once the bulk has been rinsed out. Before brewing I just rinse with the hose to remove any dust. The kettles are cleaned thouroughly after each brew and covered with a BBQ grill cover.

 

[hamiltont]

I run the hot IC water into a party tub until it's full. Brewpot gets a rinsing and scrubbing with a brush with that water (no cleaner), IC gets a rinsing in the party tub & then a spray with hot water. Mash tun (70 qt Xtreme) gets hosed out. Conical gets a hot water rinse, a full PBW soak for 24 hours followed by Star-San. Star-San for everything else that needs to be sanitized. Keep it simple and sanitize only what needs sanitizing!!!

 

[Bobby_M]

Two words.. shop vac.

During the boil, shopvac out the spent grain, a little scrub and rinse and shop vac that out too.

During the chill, collect hot output water in HLT.

After the chill, vac out the hop material from the BK. Pump some HLT water in to scrub a bit, vac that out.

Pump hot HLT water through the pump and chiller and call it a day. Dump the shopvac can out in the compost pile.

 

[eriktlupus]

shop vac....hmm might have to try that sometime.


mine is mostly just rinse out prior to get any dust/dog hair that may have gotten into a vessel while stored. then dump out spent grains and rinse and scrub with a soft sponge, i use coolers so i'm leery of using a hard scratchpad, rinse and let dry. since i use aluminium for my hlt and bk they are also cleaned the same way to prevent me from scrubbing off the oxidizing layer.

 

[TeufelBrew]

I keep two extra 5G buckets on hand. Hot runoff from IC goes into them, about 3.5G each (gets my wort down below 140 and I use ice recirc for the rest of the chill). One bucket gets pbw, the other is my rinse water. As I finish using items in the brew cycle, they go in the PBW bucket, wash then rinse in other bucket.

HLT only had water in it, so it gets dried and put away.
Mash Tun gets emptied to compost and sprayed lightly to get most of sugar/grain off the walls. Then a couple quarts of hot PBW water and a ScotchBrite pad to clean the inside with. Manifold (5' SS braid) dumped in PBW water then rinsed. Empty most of Mash Tun through ball valve to clean inside the valve. Sprayed to rinsed and remove PBW, then manifold reinserted and left on its side to air dry.

Wort all chilled, transfered to fermenter then hoses put in PBW for soak. Couple quarts removed to BK and ScotchBrite applied to get any stick stuff off inside and out. Drain thru ballvalve to clean. Spray to rinse. Hoses rinsed and dried.

Put all the equipment away and have a well deserved beer.